Customer Reviews

Joy at the End of the Tether: The Inscrutable Wisdom of Ecclesiastes

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Doug Wilson has finally provided the biblical balance for this book that contemporaries of our Lord Jesus would have said "defiled the hands." Unfortunately, many contemporary Christian expositors have agreed. This is not a book written by a backslidden schizophrenic. But it is a book of profound philosophy and a glorious exposure of the world's vanities. Every thing from inscrutable repetitiveness to ephemeral transitoriness is there - but the Church has had its exegetical eyes closed. Doug has steered a clear path between the Scylla and Charybdis of biblical interpretation. Skip the others and buy Wilson and Kaiser.

Doug Wilson's exposition of the book of Ecclesiastes is concise, well reasoned, and outstanding. He offers real world application on the following subjects:

- Joy
- Despair
- Right Judgment
- Loving your wife
- The Law
- The Place of Working Hard
- And other topics


Wilson furnishes a review at the end of each chapter.

This is a short overview of book of Ecclesiastes (125 pages) consequently it makes a good devotional resource for believers as they simultaneously read and ponder Solomon's prose. It lacks the deep detail required for biblical preaching but can be used to augment therein.
The author's writing style is precise, yet smooth. I suggest you pick this fine overview of an important book in God's word.

By Michael A Robinson author of numerous books on apologetics and philosophy; Including:
Letter to an Atheist Nation: Presupositional Apologetics Responds To: Letter to a Christian

This is easily my favorite read in the last ten years. I've found no better explanation for understanding the enjoyment of the good and the beautiful than in Wilson's commentary on Ecclesiastes. All this enjoyable stuff is just so much meaningless vanity that is here today and gone tomorrow, but when understood as gift from God's good hand it changes everything. That's the book in a nutshell, but your life will be so much more enriched by studying "Joy At The End Of The Tether" along with Solomon's meditation on life.

First off, I am not a theologian, so I won't take any theological angles with this review. However, I have read this book a couple of times and I find it to be a very refreshing perspective on biblical joy as it's presented in the book of Ecclesiastes. I very much enjoy the format that Douglas Wilson uses -- this book is fairly short, and he takes Ecclesiastes through from beginning to end without jumping around; nevertheless, he looks at every verse within context of its passage as well as the entirety of Ecclesiastes. It satisfies my number one rule with any Biblical study or narrative by remaining tied to scripture. Wilson does take a few occasional opportunities to insert what could be considered more political opinion than scriptural truth, but these segue ways are brief, easily distinguished from the teaching, and in my opinion they do not detract from the rest of the book. Ecclesiastes is a fantastic book to study, and is often very misunderstood or taken out of context, and this is the the best writing I've read on it.

Such a terrible drought in our land! Not only is there a famine of joy, but a lack of understanding of what joy is. There is more than just this.